India Couture Week 2025: Threads of Identity, Echoes of Dreams

 

image courtesy of JJ Valaya

 

text by Parrie Chhajed

Every July, Delhi transforms. The city, with its bustling character and chaos, becomes home to the patronage of Indian fashion. A legacy, a staged walk by greats, it hosts the India Couture Week, a celebration of craftsmanship and couture, a sanctum where heritage meets modernity, and where the past and future walk parallel. 

India Couture Week 2025 was held at the iconic Taj Palace Hotel in Delhi, curated by the FDCI ( Fashion Design Council of India ). The week staged poetic interactions between culture and innovation, local and global. 

Since its founding in 2008, India Couture Week has become a pivotal event in the Indian fashion calendar. The event is an ethos of the Indian spirit rooted in traditions, craftsmanship, and artisanal heritage. An answer to the Paris Haute Couture Week, an interpretation derived from India’s passed down stories and values, honoring the handicrafts that characterize Indian design. 

Through the years, ICW has recognized and defined moments in the careers of Indian designers and placed India on the global stages and fashion and luxury map. It remains one of the few platforms where, every year, we backtrace further into our culture and craftsmanship while creating new stories and keeping up with today's silhouettes and innovations. 

While last year revolved around softness and sentiments, the 2025 couture week conversed about identity, urging us to look deep within. The ideologies were seen being represented through shapes, silhouettes, and styles appliqued with reimagined traditions.

Through the lenses of legacy, identity, and reinvention, stories unfolded on the runway, and the ones that shone out the most were: Rahul Mishra, Amit Aggarwal, JJ Valaya, Aisha Rao, and Ritu Kumar.

Rahul Mishra – Becoming Love

 
 

The week opened with Rahul Mishra’s ethereal collection titled Becoming Love, which unfolded like a flower in the rain. Inspired by Sufiism’s magic, Mishra’s couture offered seven stages of love, each captured in finely hand-embroidered stories across fabrics such as silk organza, velvet, and tulle.

A combination of magnificence and reality. While one moment, a gown shimmered like Klimt’s The Kiss, the next, a lehenga carried the ache of longing. Alas came Tamannaah Bhatia, walking down the runway in a sculpted floral gown—proof once again that Rahul Mishra stitches emotion into every sequin.

Amit Aggarwal — Arcanum

 
 

If Mishra spoke of emotion, Amit Aggarwal answered with introspection. His collection Arcanum—a word meaning ‘mystery’—explored identity through the architecture of DNA. Using his signature polymer techniques and handwoven metallics, Aggarwal built garments like sacred codes: twisted helixes, cocooned corsets, and chrysalis gowns.

But behind the science was softness. There was something deeply moving about how structure met surrender. Couture here was not just worn—it was inhabited. Aggarwal reminded us that even the future has ancestry.

JJ Valaya — East

 
 

No one stages drama quite like JJ Valaya, and East—his closing show and a celebration of 33 years in fashion—was an imperial epic. A curation and compilation of Ottoman silks, Rajput extravagance, and East Asian tapestries, the collection was detailed and imaginative. Catalogued a collection where there was something for all, embroidered jackets, obi-style belts, brocaded cloaks, and voluminous skirts, as if they were brought to life. 

Rasha Thadani and Ibrahim Ali Khan closed the show with old-world poise and new-world flair. It was a fitting finale—part history lesson, part fantasy film.

Aisha Rao — Wild at Heart

Making her ICW debut, Aisha Rao was the season’s freshest dream. Her collection Wild at Heart bloomed with lotus petals, banana leaves, and rose-gold mosaics—each appliqué whispering a kind of untamed tenderness. She layered nature into couture like a fable.

Sara Ali Khan was stunning in a beautiful Banarasi lehenga. Rao's world feels like a place where rebellion is subtle and fantasy is intricately woven with thoughtful details. The entire show was truly unforgettable.

Ritu Kumar – Threads of Time: Reimagined

A quiet storm came in the form of Ritu Kumar, one of the original matriarchs of Indian fashion. In Threads of Time: Reimagined, Kumar revisited and revitalized her archives, reworking iconic prints, paisleys, and kalidars for a new generation. It felt like a love letter to Indian textiles, with the wisdom of decades and the freshness of reinvention.

This wasn’t nostalgia—it was memory made malleable.

What We Saw, What We’ll Remember

This year, ICW saw a return to tactility. Couture was about touch—embroideries you could feel with your eyes, textures that moved like memories. There was structure, but also surrender. Motifs of roots, DNA, nature, and spirituality ran across collections like leitmotifs in a symphony.

We saw metallics meet brocade, corsetry meet kalidars, and flowers sprout from pleats. And above all, we witnessed a reclamation of Indian identity in high fashion—not as tokenism, but as a language only we know how to speak.

India’s couture scene is now more intimate and more international than ever before. With young voices like Aisha Rao stepping in with fresh fantasy and veterans like Rahul Mishra and Amit Aggarwal pushing boundaries between concept and craft, couture is evolving. Indian fashion today isn’t just bridal lehengas, it’s chronicles of the land, reflected in silhouettes and fabrics, expressed by the artists, with imagination for the bold futures.

The designers were encouraged to reflect, dream, and truly connect with their vision.

Louis Vuitton SS26: Pharrell Williams' India Is Rooted in Reality, Rendered in Reverence

With a hand-painted Snakes and Ladders set, coffee-hued denim, and cinematic embroidery, Pharrell Williams' SS26 collection for Louis Vuitton reimagines India not as spectacle, but as substance.

 

Image courtesy of : Louis Vuitton

 

text by Parrie Chhajed

In Louis Vuitton’s Spring/Summer 2026 menswear show, Pharrell Williams looks east, not for ornament, but for essence. India emerges not as a motif but as a moodboard: one defined by color, craft, and quiet charisma. Far from the reductive tropes often seen in luxury fashion’s attempts to ‘globalize,’ Williams’ India is observational, tactile, and purposefully translated.

The show set, created in collaboration with celebrated architect Bijoy Jain of Studio Mumbai, was a towering hand-painted wooden interpretation of Snakes and Ladders, India’s traditional board game. It was an immediate statement: playful, rooted in storytelling, and intentionally handcrafted—an homage to India’s material cultures rather than its monuments. A.R. Rahman’s “Yaara Punjabi” set the sonic tone, blending seamlessly into the aesthetic narrative.

Williams and his team spent time in New Delhi, Mumbai, and Jaipur in the lead-up to the collection, absorbing India not through fashion history books but by walking through markets, workshops, and city streets. “You won’t see any tunics or anything like that,” Williams said backstage. “What we were inspired by from India were the colors.” And indeed, the palette tells the story. Black is replaced with a regal purple-blue. Camel becomes a dusty beige. Denim appears in a never-seen-before “coffee indigo,” inspired by Indian filter coffee and designed to fade gracefully into white thread, like sun-worn cotton.

The silhouettes, too, reflect this shift—from conventional tailoring to something more intuitive. Think relaxed pleated trousers worn with leather flip-flops, pajama-stripe jackets, robe coats, and flowing layers. There’s a sense of ease here that feels lived-in rather than styled, a softness that alludes to India’s informal luxury—the kind found in hand-pressed cotton, creased linen, and clothes shaped by climate.

A particularly poetic detail: Louis Vuitton resurrects the animal motifs originally created for The Darjeeling Limited (2007), revisiting its visual dialogue with India in a new context. Hand-embroidered zebras, palm trees, and cheetahs reappear across cashmere coats, safari jackets, and luggage—a cinematic nod refined for the runway.

Yet this was no costume drama. The collection delivered on commercial pragmatism with buttery leather outerwear, clean-cut blazers, tonal shirts, and the Maison’s signature monogrammed baggage. Everyday wear was elevated with micro-beading, metallic threadwork, and even a shell suit fully woven from metal yarn. There’s experimentation, but it's controlled, audacious without being theatrical.

 
 

Pharrell’s respect for Indian craftsmanship is unmistakable. He describes his visits to printmaking studios and embroidery ateliers as the most meaningful moments of the journey. “What art and painting is to Paris, textiles and embroidery are to India,” he said. That respect materialized in garments enriched with lace, hand-placed stones, and artisanal techniques that elevate rather than overwhelm.

This wasn’t Williams’ first Indian reference. In 2018, he launched an Adidas collection inspired by Holi. But this time, the tone is mature and rooted in research. Less festival, more foundation. It’s an India experienced rather than imagined—drawn not just from its celebrations, but its subtleties.

 

Image coutsey of Louis Vuitton

 

“I’m personally a global citizen,” Williams said. “Storytelling provides context. And when you provide context, it makes it easier for people to understand what your true intentions are.”

And that’s perhaps the collection’s greatest strength—it doesn’t speak over India; it listens to it. In a time when global references can quickly slip into appropriation, Pharrell’s Louis Vuitton stands out for its clarity of intention and depth of execution. The result isn’t just a collection inspired by India; it’s one in conversation with it.

SS26 proves that India isn’t a detour in luxury—it’s a destination. And for Louis Vuitton, it’s a terrain rich enough not just to inspire, but to shape the future of menswear.

M.I.A. and Collaborator Steve Loveridge in Kochi, India

M.I.A. and Collaborator Steve Loveridge in Kochi for India's first ever art biennale which started on 12/12/12. The Kochi-Muziris Biennale will be set in spaces across Kochi, Muziris and surrounding islands. There will be shows in existing galleries and halls, and site-specific installations in public spaces, heritage buildings and disused structures. On view for the next three months.